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2001-11-20 / 7:27 p.m. ~Grisly Scenes, and a Migraine~ Why did I want to see the "grisly scenes in Kabul"? I have a fifteen minute break, time to get online, check email, check out the hockey message boards, hmmm�what else shall I do? I know, how about Antiwar.com? Sure, I haven't seen the REAL news in a while. Oh, what's this? "Grisly Scenes in Kabul"? Must be an article, right?, surely not photos. But it is photos, and I look, and why do I look? It's a photo of a soldier, his ammunition around his neck, and he's being lifted under his arms by other soldiers, other men. His pants are bloody, the caption says he's been taken from his hiding place, he was mutilated, shot, his body dragged along the ground and left on the road. Three pictures, and in the final shot he is down on the ground, his pants are around his ankles, they are bloody in the space that would be around his crotch, his knees are bent up, he is on his back, arms outstretched, in a plea, or a question of why, and a man stands over him, rifle aimed down at him. They must have removed his penis. The blood, the pants around his ankles, the look on his face, pleading. These men are torturing each other, killing each other, and why? What is it all for? I can't shake that last photo from my mind now, I keep seeing him lying there, bloody, thinking of what they must have done to him, but it wasn't captured on film, it's left to my imagination, I'm only guessing, deducing from what I saw. That's not on our television news, now is it? Another link from that site took me to an article about how we, in this country, are getting such a slanted perspective in our news reports, centered on Pentagon briefings, not the humanitarian aspect like in other countries, on BBC news. And I watched the BBC World News the other night, on cable. If I could remember I would watch it every night. But the end line, the tag line, was about there being 191 countries in the world, and how many are represented in our news?� Imagine. Imagine being there, one of those journalists, ambushed, or one of those Taliban fighters, or one of the Northern Alliance fighters, or one of those Burka-shrouded women, or one of those children, or an animal on the street�it's all so horrible. When I get in my cozy warm flannel sheeted bed at night I am so glad to be where I am, I can't imagine being in a war-torn country. It's too horrible. What can we do to make it better? Is there anything we can do? Why can't we be a humanitarian country, truly helping people in need, why do we have to always be flying overhead dropping bombs on people? And you wonder why "terrorists" hate us? I have what I believe is a migraine headache. My eyes hurt, I feel nauseous, sort of dizzy at times, the lights on the ceiling are blinding, all noises too loud, the pain in my neck is making me feel sick. Lovely. Lulu is being sympathetic, finally, actually pretending to be nurturing. Or maybe not pretending, maybe it's real. I can't wait to get home. Last night, sleeping in my clean flannel sheets, cats beside me, was so glorious. Not that I never change my sheets, but when they're clean, and I'm clean, that first night, it feels so luxurious. I love flannel. This morning it was really hard to get up. I told Lulu about my symptoms again - yes, it's slow, when it's slow we talk, even she and I talk, we all do when it's this slow - how it always feels like I'm about to come down with something, like I never get it, I just feel about to get it, whatever "it" is. I hate this. It's like my immune system is constantly battling it out with bad cells, or viruses, or bacteria, or something. An ongoing battle to keep me from getting really sick. I have Thanksgiving plans. I'm going to a hockey game with a total stranger. More later. One and a half hours 'til I can go home� Now I'm home, I ordered a pizza and it arrived quickly. There is a Pizza Hut Delivery place right down the street. I feel much better for having eaten, but the pain is still there, muted now. I watched the beginning of the World News on the BBC, and the reports from Afghanistan were all about what's going to happen next, this meeting in Germany upcoming, who will rule the people, and the refugees, the people who've left their homes, terrified of bombing. Interviews with people who've lost wives, and children, neighbors (no women interviewed - no doubt it's not allowed). A man with two babies, his wife too ill to provide breast milk for them. They will die. A starving one year old, looking much younger. It hasn't even rained there in 3 years. Man and nature conspiring against the people of the country, the journalist says. And he also says the people are in the refugee camps because of the American bombing. Would OUR news tell us that? Makes me sick. The whole thing. This was never an appropriate response to 9/11. This is absurd. Now, I'll try to relax, lie down, watch some TV, live as an American in a free country, not worrying about bombs dropping on me. But I'll be thinking about the Afghans. Cost of the War in Iraq
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